


Distractions

by TextualDeviance



Series: The Raven and the Dove [48]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Nonmonogamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5164214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TextualDeviance/pseuds/TextualDeviance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their hearts aching at being apart, Ragnar and Athelstan each find a princess to ease the loneliness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distractions

There was something dangerous about her, Ragnar knew. Not that there wasn’t also something dangerous about him, of course, but the wantonness, ferocity, and sheer strength of will Kwenthrith displayed seemed entirely different from what he knew of Christian women. He could easily see her in his own homeland: dancing naked, spinning circles in the moonlight while the gods smiled on. Her spirit seemed caged here in this repressed culture. Curious as he was about what Athelstan had taught him about the Christian God, the way humans, at least in this place, had interpreted their deity’s will was wholly awful to women. Some calmly accepted their assigned place, but some, like the woman who was currently astride his hips, obviously bristled, and long confinement and tortures like the ones she experienced as a child certainly must have twisted and scarred her spirit until only the animal remained.

Still, he wasn’t complaining about her raw nature--at least not right now. Battle wounds, grief, and the ache of missing his beloved Athelstan had conspired to grow a great, yawning chasm inside him, and the more she paid him this kind of attention, the less he dwelt on the emptiness. Even the sharp smell of the wetness she had left on his tunic and body, odd as it was, served to give him something else to think about other than pain. It likely wasn’t a good idea to acquiesce to her desire, but at the moment, future consequences didn’t matter.

She finished before he did, her body clenching and squeezing around him in a most delightful way, and as soon as she was done, she dismounted. He stared at her in shock, wondering what would be done about his own relief. "I assume you know how to manage that," she said, as if it were standard procedure; perhaps for her, it was. He groaned and shrugged. Standing up, she brushed dirt and grass off of her hands and skirt and smiled. “See me later if you need another dose of medicine,” she purred, and wandered off back toward the camp. Once she was gone, he took himself in hand and finished the job she had started, the motions causing some measure of pain what with his injury. Still, the peak was satisfying enough, and after a moment's rest, he hauled himself up—with great difficulty—and made his way to the riverbank to clean up. As he was splashing the cool water on his face, he had a sudden vision—a strange and wholly unexpected image of his beloved in a passionate clinch with a woman of his own. He tried to focus on it to identify the woman, but her face was obscured in shadow, and then the vision faded. It wasn’t Lagertha—he would know the feel of her body and the sound of her cries of pleasure until the day he left Midgard—but he did wonder as to what woman Athelstan would have found. A Christian? It seemed unlikely. Perhaps one of the settlers. There were a few young widows and female farmhands and milkmaids among that group; Athelstan might have taken up with one of them. Whoever it was, the image caused a strange mix of feelings in Ragnar. Some of it was amusement—Athelstan finally with a woman again, years after his barely remembered night with Thyri in Uppsala!—some was also longing. They had been apart too many weeks, and Ragnar craved the comfort of being close again. Whatever fleeting pleasure he got from Kwenthrith, neither she nor anyone else could give him the succor Athelstan did.

Of course, he thought as he shook his head to clear the remainder of the vision, it was possible that it was only his imagination, and Athelstan was doing something entirely non-sexual instead. Still, his mind’s eye had occasionally shown him the man before. Perhaps it was doing so again.

“Ragnar?” His brother’s voice pierced the air, and Ragnar turned.

“Yes?”

“The funeral barges are ready to be lit. Will you come?”

Ragnar nodded, and started pulling his tunic back over his head. “Of course.” He didn’t relish the thought of being the subject of Floki’s accusing gaze again, but he would never have missed sending Torstein off to Valhalla. The pain all came flooding back as he trudged up the bank. Wherever Athelstan was, he hoped the man was having a much more pleasant time right now than he.

 

***

 

What else could he have said? Athelstan asked himself as they dressed again. The lie still filled his mouth like a taste of moldy fruit. He cared for Judith, absolutely. Pitied her, definitely. But love? No. The feeling she expressed, which he answered to, was one with which he was very familiar, and its object was many leagues away, not here in this dark, dusty storeroom.

He had known the moment they disrobed that this was a bad idea. His wounds had throbbed even more than his loins had upon seeing her lie down and beckon him close. God seemed to be hovering over his head like a storm cloud, threatening a downpour of wrath should he sin. Yet Athelstan could not, no matter what, resist the draw of her body. He was sober—as was she—and he longed to have such an experience while he was more or less clear of mind, rather than moving through a fog of mushrooms and ale. What little sense memory he had of Thyri’s soft, warm skin had faded with the years, and had always been distorted, soaked as it was in a mix of intoxicants and religious confusion. Here, instead, was a woman he could touch and kiss without such veils. Conscience be damned, his innate curiosity won out.

The coupling was good, that much was certain. Her arms were welcoming; her kisses deep and wet. She had flushed with shame when her breasts leaked a little, but it only drove him on, lapping up the thick sweetness and then gently suckling a bit more from the source. It reminded him, also, of what she had told him when he had stumbled upon her nursing her son: That while she did so, her chances of conceiving were much smaller. That alone helped erase the last of his reticence. Whatever the spiritual consequences of this act, at least there wouldn’t be a child resulting from it. Entering her, he marveled at the difference of sensation in an opening that was more designed for such things than the ones with which he was more familiar now. The intense feeling of her hot, velvety depths was strong enough that he lasted only a few moments. She seemed to be satisfied herself, though he could not tell whether she had come to a peak or not. An ancient memory of Lagertha explaining women’s bodies to him came up to remind him that women did actually have such peaks as men did, but he couldn’t remember how to tell. Simply asking seemed far too embarrassing a question to pose. In any case, she didn’t seem disappointed, though perhaps she did seem a little more matter-of-fact about it than he would have expected. Her expression of love, however, was even less expected. She had, until now, seemed like she only wanted a taste of the freedom of pagan life: the free sexual expression that seemed to so fascinate her. That her desire was inspired, at least in part, by deeper feelings had not occurred to him. Yet what could he say to her once the word hung in the air between them? What does one say to a naked woman who tells you she loves you? He could only return the word, and hope that perhaps she spoke it merely out of passion.

Still, the way she glanced back over her shoulder at him as she laced her bodice made his stomach clench. An ill-advised moment of pleasure and curiosity-sating for him, but undoubtedly something far more for her.

"We should go," he urged gently. "We can't afford to be found here together."

"Of course," she said, smiling. She approached him again, dropping another soft, urgent kiss on his mouth. "My father will be arriving soon, and I must be there to receive him, but I will see you again this evening. Perhaps," she said, her voice dropping, "we can steal away again while everyone's busy."

A shot of panic went through his chest. He tried to smile through the feeling. "Perhaps."

 

***

 

Ragnar hated this party and everyone attending it. Nearly everyone. The one person he wanted to see always seemed to be on the other side of the room, and there was always someone else pestering one or the other of them, keeping them from having a quiet moment in a corner at least to draw close and talk, if nothing else. His only solace was the looks Athelstan kept shooting him from across the room. He returned each one: solace, desire, love, a deep need for anchoring.

Lagertha, gods love her, played messenger. Ecbert kept bouncing between the three of them, rarely letting any pair have a moment together, but on occasion, he was torn away by his son or some random noble or other, and Lagertha would sidle up to either Ragnar or Athelstan, ferrying messages between them. Through her, Athelstan learned of Torstein’s death, of Thorunn’s grave wounding, of Ragnar’s concern over Burgred’s fitness to rule. Through her, Ragnar learned of the bleeding of Athelstan’s wounds and the evening in Ecbert’s bath. Eventually, however, the Saxon king managed to capture both of Ragnar’s confidantes, and possessively threw his arms around them. To Ragnar's amusement, Athelstan looked decidedly uncomfortable with the gesture and the intoxicated king’s subsequent groping, though Lagertha played her part. Glancing up, she caught Ragnar’s eye. A sly smile played at the corner of her mouth: She would keep Ecbert busy. Ragnar gave her a grateful nod. Athelstan met his gaze, excused himself, and near beelined for the stairway where Ragnar perched.

 _That_ woman. Yes, the one Athelstan stared at was the one from Ragnar’s vision: Aelle’s daughter, Aethelwulf’s wife, and the mother of the continuation of Ecbert’s line. He made a mental note to ask Athelstan later exactly what he’d been thinking when he decided to bed her. The young man’s reaction, however, made the point moot: He knew he’d made a mistake. Ragnar couldn’t help a wave of relief. For all his words about freedom of choice, he always wished Athelstan would choose him, whatever his other options. The flirty tease in his voice at the end of their conversation cemented it: His beloved was his—his alone—and no pull from his homeland, however powerful, in the form of Ecbert, or sweet, in the form of this naïve young princess, would change that.

Suddenly, the tide of people keeping them from truly reuniting seemed to ebb. If an ocean and their different gods couldn’t keep them apart, then mere mortal people would not, either. Laughing to himself, Ragnar rose to find another tankard of ale.

 

***

 

Judith seemed not to understand that this kiss was goodbye. The desperation in her voice made Athelstan feel sorry for her, but it also cemented his resolve. The last thing either of them needed was for their affair to continue. Her confused state of mind would undoubtedly have eventually resulted in dire consequences for both of them. Though he pitied her, and wished there were some way he could save her from the misery of a noble Christian woman’s duty, he knew he wasn’t the person to do that. She cried as he left, but the farther he got from her as he walked away, the more his spirit lifted.

Ecbert’s eyes seemed to burn with fury when Athelstan announced his choice, and that made him even more certain he had made the right one. Judith had begged him to stay. Ecbert had made subtle threats. Only Ragnar had, as he had done in many circumstances before, truly given him a choice of what to do. Had he decided to stay in Wessex, he would have been far more of a slave than he ever had been while Ragnar technically owned him. Only with his former captor would he ever be truly free.


End file.
